In the next year, they erected a beacon on Raines Islet to mark the entrance of a good passage through the reef. The rest of the year was spent in surveying Torres Straits. They remained thus occupied till the beginning of 1845, when they sailed for Europe, and anchored at Spithead in June 1845, after an absence of three years.

The result of those investigations was, a large accession to our previous knowledge of the sea to the eastward of Australia, now become important from our settlements; and a survey of five hundred miles of the great chain of coral reefs which act as the breakwater against the ocean.

We have heard much of coral islands, certainly the most curious means of increasing the habitable part of the world; in fact, a new insect manufacture of islands. They are of all sizes. We give the description of a small one of this order in the Capricorn Group, an assemblage of islands and reefs on the north-east coast o